Confirming the Case Against Nixon

...Indeed, Safire enjoyed the distinction of having his telephone bugged in 1970 in an attempt to discover whether he was guilty of that most heinous of sins, leaking information to the press...

...He is as nearly thoroughly bad as human beings ever get, and as President he accomplished less of value for this country than practically any of his predecessors...

...Where the economy is concerned, if the intent of Administration fiscal and monetary strategy was to reelect Nixon by a landslide, then Herbert Stein and company deserve high grades...

...The China spectacular, probably the most solid of the claims, occurred as belatedly as 1971 largely because Nixon's Red-baiting had made it politically impossible for John F. Kennedy or Lyndon B. Johnson to move any earlier...

...I am oddly grateful to Safire for unwittingly confirming the case against Nixon...

...In fact, the truth in the claim that only Nixon could have turned the trick is that out of office he would have made the policy reversal too hot for an incumbent of either party to handle...

...Cambodia, willfully devastated by American policy, is now in insurgent control, while the Thieu regime in South Vietnam has collapsed...

...I am embarrassed for Safire when I contemplate his list...

...The author's case for Nixon turns almost pathetic when he comes to the major grounds of defense: Nixon's "achievements"-which supposedly outweigh the Chief Executive's conceded personal defects, and explain the loyalty of Safire and others...

...and willing to "put image ahead of reality, his personal interest ahead of the national interest," during the Watergate affair...

...Followers of recent unemployment and inflation statistics, however, are more than likely to reach a rather different verdict...

...Safire, whose client these days is himself, faces the tough challenge of justifying years of devoted service to a master he candidly describes as having been "vindictive in victory," the proprietor of a "moral blindspot on the subject of eavesdropping...

...Otherwise, he is capable of kind words for nearly everyone from John Dean through John Mitchell to Charles Colson...

...Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the keepers of the flame, disliked his habit of mingling with media "enemies" and self-confessed Democrats at classy Georgetown dinner parties...

...One weeps at the mention of "peace with honor...

...As for detente, the Soviet Union constitutes the biggest obstacle in the path of a Middle Eastern settlement...

...It is the virtue of Satire's chronicle that nothing in it obscures this conclusion...

...The author draws from an association with Nixon that dates back to the 1959 American Exhibition in Moscow, when he served as a flack for All-State Properties, Inc., the firm that erected the "typical American home" in whose kitchen Nixon and Khrushchev debated to the applause of multitudes over the relative merits of Soviet and American society...

...To his literary credit, Safire tells this and other tales well-including a sympathetic version of Nixon's middle-of-the-night visit with young war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial, gathered to demonstrate their displeasure over the Cambodian "incursion...

...Of course, along with the rest of us, Safire learned about the tapes only when Alexander Butterfield made those fatal revelations to the Watergate committee...

...Reviewed by Robert Lekachman I suppose it is not astonishing that 700 pages on the late Nixon Administration are a bit too much of a bad thing...

...Nobody who worked with Nixon can read most of those tape transcripts," he confesses, "without a sinking, disgusted feeling...

...His hero is not, as he would have it, a deeply flawed man whose achievements will eventually be recognized after recollection of the Watergate debacle fades...

...The most charitable comment on this apologia pro sua vita that I am at the moment capable of is that in political friendships, as in marriage, there is simply no accounting for tastes...

...Apparently because he holds Secretary of State Kissinger responsible for ordering the tap, Safire is sharpest in his comments on the world's busiest Henry...

...Peace will really be "at hand," to recall Kissinger's 1972 preelection statement, on the day that the Soviets stop equipping the Syrians and Iraqis for renewed war...

...Among those cited are the dramatic thaw in American relations with mainland China, "peace with honor" in Indochina, detente with the Russians, return of revenue and responsibility to the states and cities, and competent economic management...

...Moreover, he feels he was never truly a part of the Nixon inner circle during his days on the White House staff...

...William Safire presents readers with a kind of scrap-book just chock full of old memoranda, fragments of Nixon addresses, comments by the ex-President on speech drafts, and even representative doodles scribbled by Elliot Richardson and John Ehrlichman...

...On the domestic side, despite Safire's praise, revenue sharing has come to look more like a White House device for weakening Congressional powers over appropriations and social legislation than a principled reversion to local control...